Bupa beats gloom with healthy £100m surplus and 6pc rise in customers

Bupa, Britain's biggest private healthcare company, is expected this week to announce a surplus before tax of more than £100m for 2002, compared with £92m a year earlier, and a 6 per cent increase in its UK health insurance customers.

Val Gooding, the chief executive, said that in spite of the general gloom in the economy Bupa had a very good year, with record retention rates in the core UK business.

"You get ups and downs in the economy but we believe that we have good prospects for growth in the longer term. People ask whether the private health business is going to get smaller, but our experience is quite the opposite," she said.

During 2002, Bupa acquired a 50 per cent stake in Axa Health, Australia's third-largest private health insurer, in a deal which added around one million customers.

The provident company bought 13 care homes, increasing the total in the UK to 246. Bupa, which reinvests all its surplus profit into the business, also owns private hospitals.